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This blog serves my columns as an archive, a place to add footnotes,data sources and drafts of my weekly 550 word column for the Sky Hi News.(www.skyhidailynews.com) Often these drafts are posted on my Facebook page, The Muftic Forum.. To learn more about the posting subject, click onto the links at the end of the posting.Blog will be on vacation May 28-June 25 2018, with sporadic to no postings during that time.
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Saturday, August 31, 2013

President Obama’s announcement Saturday to allow Congress to
debate and vote on military action in Syria was probably dictated by a variety
of practical considerations. It may have
come as a surprise, but looking back on the events of the week, it probably
made sense.

It was clear that he did not get the international backing ,
a coalition of the willing he had hoped. The vote opposing military action in the British parliament was very
instructive . His liberal wing was not enthusiastic or supportive. The body of evidence that could have been
convincing was not presented publicly until Friday and judgment calls and
policy decisions on both sides of the Atlantic were being made without knowing
the full facts or the proof presented either publicly declassified or the more
secretive information . The UN
inspectors’ report would not be ready for over a week, though the
administration had already dismissed what they found as simply verifying that
chemical weapons had been used but not by whom.
As expected, a UN resolution was a dead end thanks to Russia’s committed
support of Assad. The parameters, the
purpose of any strike were still ill defined in the minds of many in spite of powerful statements by Secretary
of State John Kerry and the President’s Rose Garden press conference Saturday.

The G20 meeting in
Russia, September 5, 6, was looming and
the timing was getting very close.
Perhaps that conference in St. Petersburg would also give Pres. Putin
and Pres. Obama a chance to come to some agreement on a UN resolution since they both seem to come to the same
conclusion that replacing Assad would result in giving
more strength to Russia’s and the US’
common enemy…Al Qaeda and its clones and affiliates. That agreement is a distant hope, but we can dream, can’t we.

Polls were showing that the American people wanted Congress
to check in and give their seal of approval to any military action, and in fact
a Sen. Obama had already long ago
advocated that Congress be consulted before launching military action. Many in
the military had already expressed their misgivings, but the President is their
Commander in Chief and good soldiers have always done as asked. Remaining is the question if Congress did vote against involvement or
set unreasonable conditions, would Obama ignore them, since he made it clear he
was committed to a military strike. He does have 60 days to launch a military
attack without Congressional approval, though there are some restrictions based upon the degree of threat to national security.

There are some domestic political advantages to Democrats
for throwing the ball to Congress. The Pres. needs time to bring along his own
party and he needs time to make his case to the American people. It is clear he has not yet done so, given the polling results.
There are many in Congress who do not want their vote on the record,
especially those Republicans who are traditional foreign policy hawks with primary races in districts where Tea
Party and Libertarians have expressed disapproval of intervention, even
limited. While the Democrats are
somewhat divided, the Republicans have a very large gap between the hawks of a
Sen. McCain and the isolationists. That same divide between traditional pro
business Republicans and upstart Teapartiers exists in other issues on social
and economic issues along the same
lines. Adding a fundamental disagreement
over Syria to the existing divisions might further weaken Republicans and make
it easier for the Democrats to hold onto their seats in 2014.

What will be interesting is to see whether House Minority
Leaders Nancy Pelosi, already announced in favor of limited strikes in Syria,
can convince her Congressional caucus in
the House to go along with the President. However, first assessments by
knowledgeable pundits indicate the Senate may back the President and return to
Washington before the summer break and
the House has a chance to debate and vote.

Whether or not our national interest is at stake will also
be a case Pres. Obama has yet to make
convincingly to the public. I for one do
buy the argument that if we, or someone does not put a foot down on the use of
chemical weapons now, we will have given the green light for others to use them
in the future because they no longer fear repercussions. Other bad actors could indeed believe they
could use nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction, too, with impunity and
that would make this world much more dangerous.
This is a sophisticated argument to make to an electorate which is not
very attuned to the chess game of international power players.

What our European allies ought to be doing now is to charge
Assad with war crimes for using chemical
weapons and to bring the case before the
court in the Hague or other
internationally recognized tribunals. That
would at least get the ball rolling on condemning such actions with
repercussions, much as it has done in the case of the Bosnian Serbs and the
Khmer Rouge.

Whatever action is approved should be attached to an
ultimate goal. If not regime change,
then perhaps negotiations along the line of the Dayton Accord that ended the
bloodshed in the Bosnia conflict might be the best outcome. The least
impressive outcome would be to degrade Assad’s delivery systems and air power
and to leave it at that, nothing more.
Depending upon how extensive this action may be, the intended or unintended
consequences could be either to level the playing field enough for both sides
to want to seek negotiation or to tilt the civil war in the direction of the
rebels, an outcome that may be even
worse than an Assad dictatorship. We must be very careful what we wish.

The way it looks at
this time with many reluctant to get involved, Assad thinking he is off the
hook, and even those moderate rebels in Syria who had hope they would get
Western assistance be extremely disappointed,
that goal does not appear to have a prayer in hades.

Monday, August 26, 2013

Pres. Obama appears
to be contemplating some sort of military intervention in Syria in response
to reports of a large chemical weapons attack
on civilians and increasing bi partisan pressure to take act. Whatever military
action is taken, it should be effective enough to force the parties to the
negotiating table instead of just a hand slap or a penalty for bad behavior. However,
invasion and occupation should not be the objective, either.

As the time of writing, Pres. Obama is waiting for a UN report on whether the Assad regime, or the rebels were the
perpetrators and he wants to assemble
an international coalition,
preferably with a UN resolution. . However, Pres. Obama is correct in making
certain it was the Assad regime that used chemical warfare against civilians.
That is a hard lesson we learned from
our blunder into the Iraq war.

We should have
learned much more from our excursions into conflicts in the past twelve years. From Afghanistan and Iraq we learned boots
on the ground, occupation and nation
building cost us too much in blood and treasure and worked not so well.

The President is also seeking the cover of international law that
defines the limits of our goals and
creates widespread international approval. It is counterproductive to advancing
our national foreign policy and interests if we appear as the world bully and sometimes
an ineffective one, at that. There is help with military might, and a greater sense
of world outrage at the kind of tactics the Assad regime appears to have
employed if we get a large body of other nations to join us.

The Syrian civil war most resembles the Balkan wars of the 1990’s which
also involved a civil war between and among groups affiliated by religion. Hatred erases many constraints on
civilized human behavior We were able to level the playing field
sufficiently in Bosnia by instituting no fly zones, strategic
supplying of weapons to the extent the
warring parties saw further killing and battle as futile. The Dayton Accord
ended the Bosnian conflict, the
bloodiest war in Europe since World War II. NATO air strikes during the Kosovo conflict later caused regime change in Belgrade . The cost of our own blood and treasure was
quite small.

While Syria is indeed a larger scale of a religious driven version of the Bosnian conflict, it
also has some differences: The Assad
regime has an effective air force making a casualty free enforcement of no fly
zones less likely. Missile strikes
carefully targeted to avoid civilian casualties may be a better option. Neighbors such as the Saudis and Iran are already involved , which could expand the
conflict to a general middle east conflagration. Al Qaeda- like combatants have infiltrated
the Sunni opposition and arms supplies will certainly fall into our enemies’
hands.

Knowing this, then why should we risk intervention in Syria?
The reasons are pragmatic and moral. We
can always expect combatants to be casualties, but the nature of war changed in
the 20th century. War was no
longer limited to trenches and marching armies; killing and terrorizing
civilians became the dominant tactic and technology provided the means to do it
on a massive scale.

The massacres of Srebrenica
in the Serbian drive to ethnically
cleanse Bosnia rightly motivated much of
the rest of the world to intervene. We could not tolerate another
holocaust in Europe.

The use of chemicals or any of the other many tools in the civilian mass killing toolbox need international controls
that rise above just verbal condemnation, inspectors, economic sanctions, or
back door arms supplying. The destruction of civilian life as a tactic
must be stopped unless others in the future believe they, too, can
use such inhumane practices without severe repercussions.

Sunday, August 25, 2013

Listening to
political talk this Sunday morning, I could not resist compiling a list of the GOP’s top five horse feather absurdities about
Obamacare. Here they are in no particular
order.

1.“Obamacare has failed”

The logic escapes me. The most
fundamental parts of the law that insure
30 million left out of the system now have not even been implemented in full yet. Only the
consumer protection measures for those already insured are in effect. Enrollment in the exchanges, the programs by which insurance will be made affordable for
30 million uninsured, will not begin until October and will only become
functioning after Jan. 1, 2014

2.“ Obamacare will hurt jobs because everyone
employed will have their hours cut to 29per week in order for business to avoid having to provide insurance”

It did not happen in the one lab test, the Massachusetts system, after
which Obamacare was copied.

Under Obamacare, businesses with less than 50 employees are exempted from
mandates to provide employee insurance. .Part time employees will be
able to get affordable health insurance through the exchanges, anyway.

3.“The GOP has a plan to replace Obamacare” . That
is not the current line uttered most by
the GOP; the GOP party line is just to kill it. However Sen.
Ted Cruz (R-TX)laid out his replacement plan on Sunday morning CNN talk:

“Separate access of
jobs from insurance”.Great idea.Obamacare already goes a long way to doing it because if you switch jobs, you will not lose access to affordable
health care. It is available through the
exchanges.

“Cross state insurance competition will bring down rates
to affordable levels”. That is a farce. If you buy insurance in another state, you
will very likely run into the same insurance company, perhaps operating under a
different name but owned by Blue Cross,
United, or the other few national conglomerates. Insurers are not subject to anti trust laws, leaving them free to set prices and coverage across state lines. Profit driven, they can
continue denying those with pre-existing
conditions, using more than 20% of
premiums for overhead, setting life time caps on benefits, and charging high co
pays, all practices Obamacare forbids.

Consumers buying insurance in another state would be at the mercy of
regulators in that state, with little recourse
to to dispute their denial of coverage
or outrageous anti consumer practices..

Nothing ever proposedby the GOP
has provided a fundable method to subsidize those 30 million who
cannot afford insurance now nor is there any independent study showing cross
state purchase would lower rates enough for them to afford it.

The only free markets in health care are the Obamacare exchanges which give Colorado consumers, for
example, side by side, apples to apples, gibberish free comparisons and a
choice ofover 500 plans from 18
providers.

4.“The president should be impeached for high
crimes and misdemeanors”

What
for? For using his executive authority to delay implementation of two sub provisions
of Obamacare by one year at the request of business?

5.“Obamacare will diminish the quality of our
health care system just as national health has done elsewhere”.

The system to which the GOP proposes to return, ranked
the US near the bottom by any measure… around 29th
of the industrialized nations, and all except us provide
coverage for everyone.

It is hard to see how health care would be diminished by Obamacare that requires co-pay free annual
checkups and cancer screening or provides thirty million uninsured the same
coverage as the already insured. Those 30
million now go without preventative care
and use emergency rooms when they are too sick to
treat themselves. In return they receive
bills that they cannot pay, leading many
to bankruptcy .

Monday, August 19, 2013

Obamacare has become a battle of the tweaking vs the
killing seeking. President
Obama bowed to pressure from businesses to give them more time to implement
Obamacare, much to the ire of consumer advocates, and the GOP gleefully piped that was more evidence the whole law was a failure so kill
off the whole law, even the consumer benefits. In fact, now the full roll out of the law will happen by
2015, not 2014, but the exchanges to cover
the uninsured and most of the other consumer protection provisions will be
operational in 2014, with many already
in effect now.

Recently, Obama
tweaked the law to make it easier for businesses to adjust their insurance
programs and for the rollout to go more smoothly . First, he delayed by one year the penalties
associated with the mandate for
employers to provide insurance and next,
he delayed for one year the implementation of a provision that required
employer provided insurance to put a cap on excessive copays.

The delay of the co-pay cap provision was frankly disappointing,
but not fatal. The outrageous
out-of-pocket requirements of some current employer insurance is one reason that
even those who are insured end up in bankruptcy or lose their homes.

The disappointment Is that it will be an extra year before victims of excessive co-pays will be protected; the good news is that
relief will kick into gear in 2015. If
the Teaparty GOP had its way, that protection would be repealed. In their
crusade to kill off the law or knock the props out it by defunding the ability
to implement it, unpaid medical bills would continue to plague many.

It is also disappointing that the employer mandate to
provide insurance was delayed a year.
Most large employers already provide insurance, but for those who do
not, their employees will have to wait
one more year. However, those employees
who will continue to be uninsured will
still be able to get insurance they can afford through the exchanges that can
subsidize their premiums based on their
income level. If they succeed in killing
health care reform, the GOP would leave those employees who do not get
insurance now with no insurance whatever forever.

The most recent GOP disinformation line is that young adults are going to get screwed by
their mandate to buy health care. Inclusion of healthy youth in Obamacare is a necessity to make coverage of pre-existing
conditions economically feasible by
increasing the insurance pool. Not including young people would make
coverage of pre-existing conditions too expensive to provide.

What the GOP is proposing is to eliminate the requirement
that those up to 26 can stay on their parents’ insurance. What about those
whose parents do not have insurance themselves or will be reaching 26? So many
younger workers in Grand County fit that description.

The independent Annenberg www. FactCheck.org called “hooey” a GOP legislator’s claim that young people making $14,000 a year would be stuck with a big tax
bill or be unable to afford insurance. In states like Colorado that expanded
Medicaid to cover 122% of poverty level, those working poor would be
eligible for Medicaid. In those states that did not expand Medicaid, their cost of insurance
would be subsidized or they would be exempted from taxes by a hardship clause. Those making too much for Medicaid still will
get a subsidy based upon income and be eligible for cheaper catastrophic
insurance.

Stung by charges that they have no replacement
plan, all the GOP could offer recently was
to replace Obamacare with the free
market system, offering no way whatsoever
to fund what unregulated insurers choose not cover. That is an ideological statement, not a plan.

Sunday, August 11, 2013

Pres. Obama kicked the issue of what he himself called” Obamacare”
into higher gear when he answered a
question posed by the media in an August 9 press conference. His response became an
attack on the GOP’s centralcampaign platformfor2014 midterms: to defund Obamacare and shut down the government if they
do not get their way. Obama charged, “the
idea that you would shut down the government unless you prevent 30 million
people from getting health care is a bad idea. “ With that answer, he put the
GOP on the defensive, a change from his own prior defensive reliance on simply enumerating health insurance
reform benefits. The Democratic Party’s job is now to run with the ball he has given
them and to take this new, more aggressive approachtothe
public discourse.

If Obama and his
supporters continue to put the GOP on the defensive, the GOP will be unmasked for what it really is.It is an ideologically fixated party that protects a
health care system that leaves too many with
no access to good health care, and screws those already insured with anti
consumer practices that have made inability to pay health care bills the number one cause of personal
bankruptcy. The GOP’s Tea Party wing will also now have to defend their threat to close
down the government, a tactic the GOP tried once before that caused them to lose the
next election cycle.

By stating his health
care reform benefits in terms of what
health care consumers would lose if the GOP succeeded, Obama has a better chance to help the public understand the law’s benefits. So far just listing
benefits of the law has been a failed strategy.However, enough of Obamacare has been implemented for those 85% already
insured by their employers for Pres. Obama tomake agood case. He can and did charge that the GOP wants to eliminate protecting consumers from insurers that use excessive amounts of premiums foradministrative overhead or stop protecting them from denial of insurance because of life time
caps or pre-existing conditions. The GOP
will now have defend their proposal to delete
suchpopular provisions askeeping
young adults on parent’s policies, or copay free cancer screening, annual
checkupsand contraception.

The right wing media is full of claims that Obamacare is
already a failure,a bit premature since
the implementation of the provision that would give a way for the uninsured to
buy affordable insurance through exchanges has not even happened and will not
begin until October, when consumers can begin to sign up.

What will happen
before the November 2014 midterms is that enough states will have successfully
implemented Obamacare to show the potential of success to other states who have done all
they can to sabotage the program by refusing to expand Medicaid and/ or failed
to set up their own affordable market place insurance systems. That explains why the Tea Party is focusing
on defunding at this time , hoping to knock out the ability of states to
succeed by taking away theirability to
finance implementation.The Tea Party
fears Obamacare’s success.

That there are some improvements that could be made in the
law is indisputable. For example, the small number of businesses butting up to the50 employee threshold level and do not already
offer insurance, may reduce their full time workforce. There are proposals that
have been made to solve the issue, but
the GOP Party of No refuses to even
consider any legislative tweaks in favor of just killing off the entire
legislation. Therefore, the President has been making his own tweaks whenever he can do it administratively.

Obama is onto
something. His approachof going on the attack by painting the GOP
into an anti consumer, unreasonable corner may well be a winner.

About Me

Felicia Muftic is a political columnist with the Sky Hi Daily News, Grand County, Colorado. She writes on current events from a pragmatic, fact based, reasoned perspective.
Felicia has nearly 50 years of involvement in politics, finance,and consumer affairs as either a fly on the wall in international, national, state and local levels or a participant.
Parallel to all of this is intense involvement for over 50 years in the the political process, serving in both cabinet and staff in the administration of Mayor Federico Pena . Partially educated in Europe and married to physician-refugee from the Balkans, her interests are not confined to US domestic problems, but she also has a world view and experiences which are often reflected in her columns.
Felicia Muftic es un columnista político del diario Sky News Hola, Grand County, Colorado. Felicia tiene casi 50 años de participación en la política, las finanzas y de asuntos del consumidor, ya sea como una mosca en la pared en la internacional, nacional, estatal y local o de un participante. Para más información, visite www.mufticforum.com